"The triumph of Everington’s first novel is that, while hinting at lofty literary precedents, it cumulatively takes on an unsettling voice all of its own." The Guardian

Monday, 22 April 2013

I'm In The Sanitarium

A quick note to say my story Mirages In The Badlands is now available in Sanitarium issue 8 - you can purchase it in various ways on their site and also on Amazon (UK | US). I believe it will also be available in paperback format soon.

Sanitarium have also released a free preview issue, with five stories from their first eight issues, of which mine is one - also available on their site.

The story itself was an attempt to write a zombie story a bit different to all the rest I was seeing at the time, according to the rules I set myself in this blog post here. To recap, the 'new zombie story rules' were:

New Zombie Story Rule#1: no using the basic narrative structure of modern, civilised society being gradually swept away by a zombie outbreak. The setting can be post-apocalyptic but the story can't be about how that situation came to be.

New Zombie Story Rule #2: the story cannot be centred around a disparate group of plucky survivors.

New Zombie Story Rule #3: it is not original to have the same old story but with a 'zombie with a twist' (like fast zombies - for fuck's sake) or a different setting (zombies at Buckingham Palace etc.)

New Zombie Story Rule #4: neither can originality be gained by having a pseudo-scientific explanation for the zombie outbreak.

New Zombie Story Rule #5: zombie's are the risen dead, but they don't have to want to eat us

New Zombie Story Rule #6: symbolism - zombies as a symbol for mindless consumerism was an original idea when Romero did it. It isn't now. Nor is the idea that zombies are symbols (used consciously or otherwise) for our fears of super-flu etc.

New Zombie Story Rule #7: zombies don't have to hang around in big groups.Depending on your point of view, I stuck to five or six of those rules. Have a read and see if you agree.